Alberta Family Wellness Initiative: Research Update

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Early Adversity, Toxic Stress, and Resilience: Pediatrics for Today.

Dowd, M. D.

Pediatric Annals46(7), e246–9.

Never before in the history of science have we had better insight into the factors that determine the health and well-being of a person from infancy to adulthood. An expanding body of knowledge is converging from numerous disciplines including neuroscience, education, behavioral science, public health, the social sciences, and medicine. Awareness of the impact of early childhood adversity and toxic stress is growing rapidly among both professionals and the lay public. This calls for a reevaluation of how and what we, as child health care providers, should deliver to maximize our impact on individual health and well-being across the lifespan. This article briefly summarizes the topic and gives examples of how child health care providers are innovatively incorporating the latest science in practice.

Implementation of an Evidence-Based Parenting Program in a Community Mental Health Setting.

Roosa Ordway, M. et al.

Infant Mental Health Journal39(1), 92–105.

The process of mental health intervention implementation with vulnerable populations is not well-described in the literature. The authors worked as a community-partnered team to adapt and pilot an empirically supported intervention program for mothers of infants and toddlers in an outpatient mental health clinic that primarily serves a low-income community. We used qualitative ethnographic methods to document the adaption of an evidence-based intervention, Mothering from the Inside Out, and the pilot implementation in a community mental health clinic.

Mobile Technology-Based Interventions for Adult Users of Alcohol: A Systematic Review of the Literature

Fowler, L. A. et al.

Addictive Behaviors62, 25–34.

Worldwide, 16% of people aged 15 and older engage in harmful use of alcohol. Harmful alcohol use leads to a host of preventable negative social and health consequences. Mobile technology-based interventions provide a particularly promising avenue for the widespread and cost-effective delivery of treatment that is accessible, affordable, individualized, and destigmatized to both alcohol-dependent and nondependent individuals.

Toward a Targeted Treatment for Addiction

Creed, M. C.

Science 357(6350), 464–5.

A major challenge in treating many neuropsychiatric disorders is that diagnoses are regularly based on behavior rather than on biomarkers, as well as the fact that such conditions are often not associated with gross structural brain changes. Addiction is one example of a disorder defined by pathological behavior (drug seeking despite harmful consequences) in which there is no significant loss of neurons and for which there is no cure.

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